Profs. Mayland Chang and Shahriar Mobashery have been in the news for multiple discoveries this year, including their work on diabetic wound healing and a new class of antibiotics to treat drug-resistant MRSA and other infections. MRSA is a serious public health concern, causing 278,000 hospitalizations and 19,000 fatalities each year in the US. These projects have been highlighted in C&E News, Chemistry World, and numerous other news outlets around the world.

Profs. Alex Kandel, Steve Corcelli, Ken Henderson and collaborators have discovered a new quasi-crystalline material. The material, made from the self-assembly of ferrocene carboxylic acid on a surface, shows highly unusual five-fold symmetry. This work is presented in a paper entitled “Self-Assembly of Hydrogen-Bonded Two-Dimensional Quasicrystals” in the journal Nature.

Prof. Marya Lieberman’s PADs (paper analytical devices) project has garnered a great deal of attention in the past year, including being highlighted by Fox News, Scientific American, Voice of America, MSN.com, and the New York Daily News. Prof. Lieberman also received a grant from the Gates Foundation to continue this exciting work.